Day 17: Searching for the Stitching

We took Micky to the Ocean today. Not the beach, the Ocean. The beach is warm sunny days with soft tidal waves that slide across your sandals. The Ocean is a totally different place. The Ocean is gray waves slapping the sand and moving rocks as big as your fist. A sound I can hear, even now, in the safety of my living room. A rumble, like sneakers in a drier. It was in between tides when we took the dog to play. Micky is a lot like the Ocean on an angry day. He's all energy and noise and not completely pleasant.

So we're standing at the edge of the earth. Rich threw a baseball out into the water, the usual routine. But the ball was waterlogged and sank, as Micky charged in after it. He's looking and looking for the ball- running up and down the short beach until he finally stands and faces the water. I can still see him standing there, glaring down at these foamy gray waves that pull up to his chest. I was ready to go get another ball, but Micky doesn't move; he's daring the Ocean to keep his ball. He stays like this for thirty seconds, maybe a minute, just looking at nothing- looking at everything, searching for that red stitching. Then a wave, larger than the rest, crashes over my dog's head and he's soaked to the fur, shaking and without a ball.

I look at this crazy mixed breed of a dog and I absolutely love him. This is a dog that I have dreamed about putting to sleep, that I have bruises from. This is a dog that instigates most of the arguments in my household. A dog who snaps at everything- from people to mosquitoes. But I watched him take on the Ocean for a moment, as if he could bully the waves into giving up his ball.

And there was something in the ridiculous tenacity of his stare down with the Ocean that reminded me of love. Maybe love- or our partners- are a little bit like that red-stitched waterlogged baseball. They starts out precious to us, we play with them all the time, so much that they are marked by our kisses and affection. But eventually they become older and worn. They don't look so shiny anymore. And when they're thrown into the ocean of our lives- the crisis, the craziness- how many of us just want to go look for another?

No, we need to be like my crazy dog, who even now refuses to get off my feet, even though I've lost circulation in both of them. We need to face the Ocean and look for those red stitches. We need to stand there, even when life crashes over our faces. We must stand by the person we love. Because they are ours. Because we chose them.